Regional Stories

Following the call from the WHO Director General in 2018, in August 2020, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution calling for elimination of cervical cancer and adopting a strategy to make it happen. The Global Strategy outlines the following threshold: we will have eliminated cervical cancer as a public health problem when all countries…
    Six delegations from PAHO and the Guatemalan Ministry of Health toured the most affected areas of the country to assess the damage and health needs.    
  Under current COVID-19 guidance, all communities across Colombia are obliged to cremate people when they die, but an exception is made for the indigenous people of Alta Guajira. The Wayúu people’s beliefs and cultural practices around death are so important, that the Government now allows them to bury their dead underground or in a…
"This video was shot prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. (In Spanish, with English subtitles.)" El Salvador is on its way to being certified malaria-free, having reached 3 years without local transmission. Related Links Health Topic: Malaria Destination Elimination Initiative
Anita Barbosa believes she has been cursed. For the past four years, the elderly indigenous  woman from Alto Rio Negro, deep in the Brazilian Amazon, has suggered from a severe case of tungiasis, a parasitic infestation caused by penetration of the female Tunga penetrans or Tunga trimamillata flea into the skin. The parasite causes painful,…
PAHO trains 2,700 community health workers and supports scaling up of laboratory diagnosis